


The Red Card

by lollard



Category: The Mysterious Production of Eggs (Album)
Genre: Dark, Disturbing Themes, F/M, Possessive Behavior, Power Dynamics, Power Imbalance, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-22
Updated: 2010-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-13 23:03:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lollard/pseuds/lollard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A palindrome is the same thing backwards and forwards. A fake palindrome just looks that way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Red Card

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cinco](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cinco/gifts).



> This is a pretty dark take on the woman of "Fake Palindromes", and the fact that I feel like I need to apologize for that says something about the song itself, and why it's so powerful. I'd love to see the day come where this interpretation makes no sense in any current cultural contexts. Until then, here's a story.

_Unauthorized duplication, while sometimes necessary, is never as good as the real thing. All rights reserved._

\-- the fine print on the back

 

In Chicago, a thousand years ago, she'd had a teacher of chemistry who called them 'horny boots'. The teacher was an excitable brunette with a drawl, proud to be a graduate of the University of Tennessee, and she got away with threatening to take off points if her students didn't wear orange on Fridays in the fall. She'd always thought the teacher did it by smiling at the (male, middle-aged, soul-patched) principal in an effort to forestall complaints, but since she could always grab one of her older brother's or her father's Bears shirts, tie it at her midriff, and point at the orange C and call it a day, she'd never minded too much.

It was the horny boots thing that gave her pause, back then. The teacher had looked at the student teacher one day, kilted and wearing heeled boots that came up to her knees, and had at the very least waited until the student teacher left before shaking her head and identifying those boots as horny. Her friend, always more inclined than her to speak without being spoken to, asked why; the teacher's response was that boots like that were a big red flag to the male of the species, letting him know that you wanted sex.

(The teacher had started veterinary school at the University of Tennessee, they found out later, but never finished.)

In her room later -- weeks later, even -- she lay on her back, looking up at the ceiling, thinking about that. _Horny boots_. Sending messages with your footwear. Telling them all you're only after one thing.

***

Now: older, wiser, East Coastier. She shares a studio in Williamsburg with a cat and a ball python. B.A. Northwestern; M.A. NYU.

She leans back on her bed, drawing up her left leg with her, and slowly runs her hand down her calf, taking the zipper with her. The boots are black leather -- suede, not patent, as patent (he told her over dinner) would be whorish. Can't have that.

This isn't the first time she's seen Peter, or even the tenth. There are rules to live by when you want them to see you as a lady, and the first is to play hard to get long enough to get their respect. She and Peter are beyond that, though: she played hard to get and got his respect, and now here she is, wearing horny boots for him in her own apartment.

Peter, blazer off, collar and cuffs undone (and cufflinks paired neatly on her nightstand, next to the leather restraints), watches her with visible excitement. She knows what she's supposed to be doing. She slowly hooks the heel of her boot between thumb and hand, pulls the boot off, and lets it drop. Her knee socks -- Peter likes the idea of a schoolgirl -- get rolled down, and she catches the brief flicker of displeasure in his face when he sees her bruised shin. _I play soccer_ , she told him on the first date, _I was on scholarship at Northwestern_ , and his incomprehension should have been a tipoff. But she's always been slow to read the signs.

She keeps stripping for him. The other boot is next. He likes it when she leaves her skirt on; he ordered her to keep it the first time. She'd come from the co-ed league in Park Slope that night, playing forward just like always, small, speedy, hair pulled back tightly away from her face. On the field it's a dance where she's just as good, where aggression gets rewarded. She has a reputation in the league, a reputation for fierceness, for maybe playing a little dirtier if you cross her. A yellow card once every couple of weeks, a red card twice last season.

 _Think about soccer_ , she tells herself, as she slides her panties over her hips, drops them to the floor, steps out of them. Peter knows how to get her off. That's why he's still in her apartment. She doesn't like that he doesn't seem to be concerned by the way her expression never changes (she's pretty sure of that, anyway) when she's taking her clothes off, and she doesn't like the way he rolls his eyes whenever she asks where the condom is, but he's still the only man who's ever made her come twice in a night, and she's not tired of his bullshit orders yet. He'd actually said that all the women he'd slept with just needed a firmer hand.

Every girl needs an asshole story to tell, she figures, as she kneels in front of him, as he slides forward to the edge of the chair, undoing his fly. Peter will be hers. Hard not to contrast the way she feels now with the way she feels on the field with her team, with her opponents: passive and active, dull and sharp, fake and real.

He puts his hand in her hair, and twists, as she blows him. She's asked him not to do that before.

She blows him. He fucks her. She comes. He falls asleep without further speech. She figures he's sure he's done his duty by her. The light from the alarm clock winks off the buckles of the leather cuffs.

She shifts out of her bed and pads to the bathroom.

Do you leave home to come to the big city, only to give up your _self_? In the bathroom that's the question she considers. Because she's followed the rules. When she wants a man, she wears her horny boots -- and sometimes even the patent leather boots, because she owns them. Literally and figuratively. She likes sex. She's never made any secret about that, and she's not ashamed by it. But if she's being honest with herself at one in the morning, sitting on the toilet, staring at the blue-green bruise on her shin the size of her palm, she doesn't like what she's doing with Peter. And she's not sure the orgasms are worth feeling the antithesis of the way she feels on the field any more. They were. But now maybe they're not.

She flushes the toilet, washes her hands, looks in the mirror. Tidying her hair isn't worth it. One of the lipsticks on the shelf where she keeps her cosmetics has fallen on its side. She picks it up, looks to see which shade it is. Bright red -- the kind she usually pairs with the boots.

She regards it for a moment. Puts it back. Turns off the light.

A few hours later, Peter's phone buzzes on the floor, buried somewhere in the recesses of his pants. Blinking, she feels around in the pile until she untangles it, squints at it while hanging over the edge of the bed and shoving her hair out of her eyes.

_lol midwest grls good fucks_

It's spying. She doesn't care. She flips through the remainder of the messages -- assigned to somebody named Mark -- and it's what she expects: commentary on her promiscuity, her boots, her performance. The phone goes back in his pants. She lies on her back, staring at the ceiling, until she dozes off some time around four.

She doesn't make Peter breakfast in the morning, but wakes him up to tell him that they've overslept (they haven't) and she needs him to get out as soon as possible, and she'll call him later to talk about making it up to him.

Once he's gone, she takes a shower, hot as she can stand, and wraps her body and her hair in a clean towel, and goes to her front closet to pull a black box off the top shelf. It's dusty. It's something her big brother gave her before she left Chicago, telling her, _you're gonna need a toolbox to deal with stuff out there_.

The kit goes on the coffee table. She drops herself on the sofa, moves the empty wineglasses, and undoes the clasp. She surveys the contents of the box. She gets up, goes to the bedroom, picks up the cuffs on the nightstand, turns them over in her hands.

She's never used the toolkit before. Never had cause.

***

When she surfaces from the subway, the wind scores her face, her lungs. Her hair lashes her cheeks. For a moment she's back at Lakeside Field, under the lights, snow threatening and a long night of fighting to come.

She hums to herself the rest of the way to work.

***

"Peter. Hi." She sounds chirpy even to herself. "I just wanted to apologize again for rushing you out so soon -- yeah, my boss, he was being _such_ a jerk, but I had to come in early to finish a project. It's review season, you know how it is." A tinkly laugh. She's sitting on her couch again, slowly twirling a cuff around two fingers, cell phone held with her free hand.

"So anyway -- I was wondering if you wanted to come over next Monday? If you're free?" Her voice slides into a lower register. "I'd really love to see you.

"Nine? Sure. That works _great_. See you then." A pause, and she summons her inner Eartha Kitt. "Looking forward to it."

She hangs up, and looks at the open kit on her coffee table, with the battery-powered drill and twelve bits lined up neatly next to the box.

She twirls the cuff.

She can be patient.


End file.
